There has been much going on inside me lately, partly the result of work with my sponsor and partly because I have just been so tired.  Tired of anger being the driving emotion in my life the last year, tired of only feeling peace in tiny doses which are enough to keep me getting up in the mornings but not yet enough to feed me, to nourish my soul.  Tired of having this albatross around my neck, holding me back, pulling me down.  So I have been working; I have been sitting in silence and praying, I have been trying to listen, I have been talking with friends and going to meetings and generally just trying to do the work of becoming willing.   Willing to make changes, to be changed.

In so many places, in so many ways, I have been getting these nudges from my spirit.  From the words spoken at meetings or the books I have randomly chosen from my shelves, there have been words or phrases that have spoken to me.  While driving, I hear songs that speak to me, that tell me the Big Guy is up there and he is listening and that he wants me to do this one thing.  Still, no matter how obvious the signs, no matter how clearly the meaning, I want to ignore it.  I want to deny that I know what I need to do, I want to keep holding on to this one thing.  I hear the small voice that says, “Kori…..” and I turn the music up louder so I can’t hear.

Oh God, I say, please help me, but then when he tries to I will do everything in my power to avoid taking that help.  Are we all like this?  My friend P. says that every time someone places their fingers up to their mouths-as in smoking or eating or nail biting-they are trying to hold in the fear, and the trick is to figure out just what there is to be afraid of.  SO I have been thinking of that as I smoke too much, eat nearly an entire bag of chocolate stars, decimate a bag of pistachios.  I also avoid having to feel my feelings by keeping busy; I did laundry and I cleaned and I make some chili and then a cake-and that wasn’t enough so I made three batches of granola and then absorbed myself into a book so deeply that I was able to ignore everyone and everything in my life (and that is why there was no weekend recap this week: it would have consisted of “I had a really great day with Jacquie in Saturday but then all day Sunday I compulsively ate, cleaned, baked, shut out life and added on a little soupcon of blame and finger-pointing so I could successfully avoid having to do what I know I need to do.  Thanks for stopping by!”).  Anything and everything to avoid having to actually do what I am told.

So this I know. Spiritual unrest for me manifests itself in a lot of different ways, but the most obvious ones are physical.  Not just the compulsion to stuff my body with food but things like my jaw and ear hurt so bad from the TMJ that I can hardly open my mouth without crying out in pain, or the feeling that someone slammed an ice-pick into the back of my head or the slight propensity to wake up needing desperately to be sick but knowing that nothing will come up.  On top of the physical things, of course, there is the mental and emotional anguish that comes from not having peace.

So I have decided to listen.  Not just half-ass nod my head “I hear you” kind of thing, but really and truly listen to that voice.  Every time something has spoken to me, I have closed my eyes (sometimes metaphorically-I don’t actually do that when I drive, and God speaks to me a lot in the car.  Usually he is telling me that to throw one of the fighting kids out of the moving car would be, perhaps, a faux pas, but sometimes he gives me much more earth-shattering advice) and opened up to embrace, simply, the possibility of change.  Just that-the possibility.

I don’t know what the real answer is, but I do know the answer is there, and probably closer than I think.  Maybe it is simply becoming willing, truly willing, or maybe I already know the answer but don’t want to deal with what it is.  What I do know is that underneath the ugliness that has been me lately, there is something pretty beautiful just waiting to be noticed.  I know that I am loved by my Big Guy, even when I am a fat, neurotic, toxiacally angry mess, and I know that if I am willing, he will give me the tools I need to keep growing.  I don’t know much else, but maybe I don’t need to know any more than that.  That I am loved, just here where I am.